Hope it is okay to ask this here. Is there a reason that the English translation to some words on WaniKani is in plural and some are singular form?
Do you have some specific examples?
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しょほ is Basics, ABCs, elements and rudiments. しんぱいごと is cares, worries and troubles even though one of the example sentences is singular
私の一番の心配事は、町に降り落ちる火山灰です。
My biggest worry is volcanic ash falling over the city.
Almost every vocab is singular, but there are a few cases like these
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That’s more to do with standard English usage - it’s more typical to say, for example, “understand the basics” or “all my troubles seemed to far away”. Japanese doesn’t imply anything so far as plurality goes.
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Is there a magic way to differentiate between じん and にん for some vocab or is it just memorization ? For example I struggle with some words like 美人,病人and 商人…why are the last 2 にん not じん? My understanding so far had only been that にんis a counter word and じん is for nationality.
If you search forums (or just google “nin vs jin”), there will be bunch of old topics, couple of examples
My understanding that while there are some patterns present, many people use different mnemonics (like ninja/nintendo and Jin/jeans/genes).
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For the suffix uses (when the kanji is being attached to something that is already a word on its own) there are rules. You probably know them and these cause people very little trouble.
When it’s not a suffix (and that could mean it appears first or last in a compound, just not as an add-on), the reading is based on when the word was imported from China. People make up mnemonics to try to help, but just remember they’ll be full of exceptions because the underlying reason for the difference is arbitrary.
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I have a question about some dictionary notation. The definition for 群がる on Goo says:
［動ラ五（四）］たくさんのものが一つ所に寄り集まる。
［動ラ下二］
The part in brackets for definition 1 is:
- 動 = verb
- ラ = ending in る
- 五 = godan
But what does the 四 indicate?
Also for definition two, what does 下二 indicate?
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I don’t think they’re really that important to know. Sounds like 四 is just a historical name.
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Yeah, 五段 verbs used to be 四段 verbs, but then they added the ～おう conjugation. Dunno why the dictionary feels the need to specify, though.
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Hello. I’d like to ask for thelp with the translation of one sentence. Like, although I know all the words, and the grammar doesn’t look difficult, for some reason I cannot think of suitable and “readable” english version. It’s character description from one Visual Novel’s manual (the game in question is てのひらを、たいように)
I have a problem with the last (bolded) sentence, I pasted the rest to give a context:
主人公たちとは違う学校に通っている少女。
大きな土蔵のある家に住み、この町でもっとも古くから住んでいる家系にあたる。
子供と大人の中間的な存在で、大人でありたいと望む自分がいつつも、無理に背伸びをすることで、結局はまだ子供でしかないことを逆説的に証明している。
悪気はないが、無邪気な言動で引っ張り回すことがしばしば。
More specifically - how the hell am I supposed to translate 引っ張り回す in this context?
(I suppose it might be a problem more with my English than with Japanese… 
)
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Heh, I frequently come up blank when it comes to turning translations into natural-sounding English, which is weird because I’ve been speaking English my entire life.
But yeah, 引っ張り回す = pulled around (to various places).
Perhaps:
She bears no ill intent, but with her innocent speech and conduct, she’s often pulled around.
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Hmm, but 引っ張り回す is transitive, and in this sentence it isn’t in passive form…
After completing her route in the game already, I wonder if it isn’t other way around - that she’s pulling other people around (especially our poor protag-kun 
). Like, she treats him a bit like an older brother (calling him にいちゃん all the time), and often makes him treat her to some sweets etc Would that make sense then?
“She means no harm, but she ends up pulling people around with her innocent behaviour”
(because they find it difficult to refuse her?)
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Cough. Yes, that would be a good point. Let’s go with that.
I did that on purpose. To test you.
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I have zero context here, but:
She means no harm but frequently jerks people around with her simple-minded/puppyish/innocent behavior.
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Yeah, that would also work.
Thanks guys, this conversation was very helpful 
For now I went with something like this for the whole passage (I needed it to fill in character description on vndb) :
A girl attending different school than other characters. She lives in a mansion with a large storehouse in the backyard, fitting the oldest family in town.
Not a child anymore, yet still not an adult, she desperately wishes to become an adult already, metaphorically stretching her back while standing on her tiptoes. However, by doing this she only proves that she’s still a child after all.
She means no harm, but often she ends up pulling people around with her innocent behaviour.
(it was yesterday, so I went with my first version, as this was before @tel003a 's reply)
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I have (just) started reading and I found a word that I don’t understand, maybe due to grammar:
Context
It’s the very beginning of One Piece (manga), when the village Luffy grew in is presented.
The sentence is:
村はいたつて平和である
I’ve also got the (official) translation:
“And the village is at peace”
What is the role of いたつて?
jisho (the website) suggests a division: い + たつ
The only たつ that made sense is 経つ [to pass (of time); to elapse], but there’s no たつて inflection I could find. (And the い would remain a mystery)
What does it mean? Is it some grammar form that I couldn’t recognize? Thanks in advance
Is it possible it’s いたって? Jisho says that means “very much; exceedingly; extremely”.
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Looks like a normal height つ (unless it’s a typo)
Image
Edit: Not sure how I missed it earlier, but Google returned this:
(which is almost the same as 至って and has a similar meaning: “perfectly” . No idea whether it’s a coincidence that they are so similar and have similar meaning.)
Anyway, thank you!
I decided I was going to read a difficult book, and the book is also unfortunately a pdf so I can’t just copy paste unknown kanji. I’ve gotten a lot better at searching by radical, but I’m actually kind of stuck on the second one in this sentence here. I know 林 is forest and the second kanji uses the same tree radical, but the right half of that doesn’t seem to match the list of radicals I see on jisho even a little bit. Does anyone have tips on how I’d look this up? Normally my strategy would be to start with tree and try to count strokes so I know approximately where I’m looking.
